Rishi's Big U.S. Pitch Betmo

Red carpet welcome as pm holds court at baseball | Ukraine tops agenda but crunch talks on a.I. Threat | he bids to move on from fraught Boris-Truss era

- Nicholas Cecil

RISHI SUNAK was making his big pitch to Joe Biden today to burnish the special relationship ties between Britain and America in his first Oval Office talks with the president.

The war in Ukraine was set to top the agenda, with the UK having led the West in supplying arms to Kyiv to fight back against Vladimir Putin’s invasion.

The Prime Minister’s White House visit comes at a crunch time in the conflict, amid reports of Ukrainian forces seizing the initiative in a series of front-line battles thought to be part of the long-awaited counter-offensive. Its success, or not, could shape the outcome of the war. The two leaders were expected to also discuss the growing threat from China, artificial intelligence and Mr Biden’s inflation reduction act, a massive package of tax breaks and subsidies seeking to boost US green industries, which has been criticised as protectionism.

Crucially, they were also seeking to move on from the more fraught trans-Atlantic relations under the brief premiership of Liz Truss and of Boris Johnson, with tensions over their confrontational approach to Brexit and the Northern Ireland trade row. They were laid bare when Mr Biden recently told a Democrat gathering in New York that he had travelled to Northern Ireland in April, for the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, to make sure “the Brits didn’t screw around” over the Brexit trade row, comments which were condemned by Tory MPs.

Mr Sunak yesterday opened his two-day Washington visit by laying a wreath at the tomb of the unknown soldier at Arlington National Cemetery.